Sunday, April 23, 2006

Strong showing in “San Fran”

The final 24 hours of the San Francisco national high school journalism convention proved successful for my students and their publications. Both the yearbook and newspaper placed in Best of Show contests, and four of 10 students earned awards in national on-site contests.

The Best of Show winners were announced at the Saturday awards ceremony, which we skipped to do some sight-seeing in the Haight section of town. The contest involves various categories of newspapers, newsmagazines and yearbooks, all based on number of pages -- which theoretically means publications of similar attributes will be judged together. There is one judge for each category, usually a professional journalist or a seasoned veteran educator with no students at the convention. I judged the newsmagazines a couple years ago, and it was just me and a pile of newsprint. So, I always advise my students that it is one judge’s opinion on that one day compared to that group of publications. There really is not a lot of consistency to it all. In the eight previous conventions, we’ve only placed in the top 10 three times. Because of that, we decided a better use of our time would be to see more of the city instead of wait during a marathin awards ceremony for our five seconds of excitement.

But Saturday both the newspaper and yearbook placed for the second convention in a row. The Apple Leaf newspaper placed sixth, and the Wa Wa yearbook placed fifth. The newspaper placing repeated its highest-ever place; it also placed sixth two years ago in San Diego. The yearbook also placed fifth last November in Chicago.

The on-site contests require students to use provided information to write a story, captions and/or headlines. Two yearbook students earned honorable mentions in their categories for copy- and caption writing. Two newspaper students earned superior ratings in editorial and feature writing.

I’m glad we stayed for the Sunday morning awards ceremony, and it was a fantastic honor for my students to be able to earn national recognition. The ceremony ended quickly, and we were soon en route to the airport. After four days in the city, the students had learned a lot about staying in a group, getting on the subway train and being aware of their surroundings. Two students misplaced their tickets, but we had the manifest, so it was fine.

-- Composed at Oakland International Airport, Calif., and posted in Wenatchee, Wash., with my own high-speed wireless connection

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Logan, it's Craig. I'm not seeing my most recent comment on here...guess my internet connection must have gotten cut off when I went through that tunnel back there or sumthin'. Anyway dude, hope you're doing well, I guess I'll just talk to you later or sumthin'.

Anonymous said...

Yo A-dogg. I have to say, San Fran was much more exciting than I thought it would be. I really did learn some new things. But I think it was more rewarding to know that some of the things they thought down there, we were already using regularly. It was an exciting trip that I wont forget. I'd be glad to go again any time. I'm looking forward to Denver next year...that's where it is, right?